


Untitled Joxter Fic

by FurorNocturna



Category: Mumintroll | Moomins Series - Tove Jansson
Genre: Bastard Cat Joxter, Mumriks are cats, Mumriks with paws and tails, Untitled Goose Game AU, and it’s exactly what you think, give or take a few alterations and surprises, yes you read that correctly
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:53:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21827014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FurorNocturna/pseuds/FurorNocturna
Summary: It’s a beautiful day in the village…and you are a horrible Joxter.Or A Miscellaneous Adventure of Joxter Doing Bastard Cat Things
Comments: 11
Kudos: 44





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [YourLocalEccentricScientist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/YourLocalEccentricScientist/gifts), [semisketched](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=semisketched).



> I’m not dead
> 
> Beanstalk fic will resume near the end of the week if not a little later
> 
> Enjoy this in the meantime

The sun came up as it always did, gracing the world with its brilliance. A lovely thing, were it not for the fact it chose to blind you with its rays. Or in some weird sort-of sense, as it did so while you were asleep.

Well, you weren’t anymore, so you might as well get up.

Uncurling from your resting spot in the tree, yawning as you slunk into a downward stretch. You followed with a backbending stretch to remove the remaining kinks in your spine before adjusting into an upright sit.

You yawned some more, no thanks to a certain rude awakening, in that wide-mouthed catlike way where you exposed all your fanged teeth on display. Mumriks were often described as feline-like, and you were no exception. You even took pride in being a more feral sort than most mumriks and creatures in general.

There was never not a good time to show off such at any given moment.

Even if it was just to yawn.

After clawing the trunk of your tree with your nature-gifted paw weapons, you nuzzled it with your face for good measure to stake your claim marking the tree as yours.

You shook out the flakes of bark from your raven hair before finally climbing down.

You land deftly on your feet and eye your surroundings, flicking your tail absently.

You weren’t sure what to do now.

You were never one for making plans regularly, typically just winging it in how you would go about your day.

You were too awake to go back to sleep, but there was nothing interesting enough around to satiate your boredom for doing anything else.

Curse the sun.

How cruel this world could– ooh! A bird!

A nice, plump pheasant.

Perfect for hunting. Likewise perhaps also for eating.

You skulked expertly between the blades of the tall grass, edging closer to your unsuspecting prey. It pecked at the ground, oblivious to the mighty predator approaching. Another step, and another, but you stop short of getting too close.

You drop fully into a crouch, eyes on the prize and waiting for just the right moment.

A smidge adjusting of the positioned hindquarters, another pause, and…you pounce!

You lunge forward with swan like grace.

But alas, the bird evades you!

You are not disappointed.

What fun is there in pursuing the hunt without any chase?

So you dash after your prey, and what fun your chase is!

This pheasant is a crafty one, with admittedly impressive evasive tactics. It eludes you over and over, but is unknowingly steadily losing. With each time you miss the catch, you notice your prey gradually losing speed.

Be it on the ground or up in the branches of the trees, nothing deterred you or slowed your pace.

Another serpentine, another dodge, another sprint step to pick up speed, you realign yourself and you pounce once more.

From the trilling squawk and feeling of a feathery presence in your paws, you’ve caught it! You’ve won the game!

Huzzah!

It is only then that you realize how far you’ve traveled, that your chase brought you outside the forest. 

Gone were the walls of trees on all sides of his vision, replaced with open, empty, meadowy greenery. Down the hills was a small lake, and you could just make out a bridge arching over where a river deposited into the lake.

Strangely you don’t recall this place despite the location, which catches your interest the most. It was the way of the vagabond to travel to places, see all the world had to offer, and with few exceptions, rarely revisited the same place twice.

You would have to take a closer look, you think thoughtfully as you lift a paw to scratch your stubble. You furrow your brow in confusion to why your paw feels feathery–

…You then remember the shuddering bird still in your grasp.

Not feeling particularly peckish, you decide you are content with only winning your game of tag. Retracting your claws and releasing your hold, you let the poor thing go.

The pheasant doesn’t move at first (smart bird, indeed) and hazards a glance at you cautiously. It studies you a moment longer before darting off back into the forest as fast as it can manage. 

Watching it go is enticing enough to almost convince you to chase it again, but your ears prick up at a new sound.

You scamper down the hilly clearing towards the lakeside, hoping to get a better look at the new surroundings and find the source of that sound.

And you do, but the discovery brings little joy.

You narrow your chatoyant blue eyes, blood boiling as you furled your mouth into a growling snarl at the sight.

One of the most wretched, most distasteful, most _vile_ sights any poor creature could find themselves unfortunate to come across:

 _A park keeper_.

Humming a tuneless ditty (horrifically off-key, in such only the worst scum of the world could achieve), the villain mauled their poor innocent captives with their filthy torture device. Those cursed clippy ‘pruners’ whose snipping offended your ears!

No one had the right to imprison or disrespect nature.

Anyone who claimed such entitlement deserved to be met with a terrible fate.

It was then that you noticed something beyond the park. A village. Simple and quaint, but your powerful eyes saw the more maligning details others wouldn’t notice unless up close:

The gaudy adornment vanities that hadn’t yet fully encapsulated the town, indicative of a petty, persnickety populace. Worst of all, every niche of it was drawn and quartered with lines of wooden picket stakes, and additionally speared and skewered with unsightly cipher spikes in random locations.

It was one insult to cage nature in bars and fences, but a whole other disgrace altogether to also litter the land with worthless signs!

Now you were angry.

Normally, you needed no incentive to start up mischief among others on your travels. All in good fun, and often to everyone’s mutual benefit of making things more interesting. Then there were those who would antagonize you, which required more attentive and more _vicious_ trickanery to properly deal with.

The resulting reputation you unwittingly built up from this made you something of a legend in certain locales.

You were Joxaren of the Sverige Wilds.

These denizens defiled this good land and degraded its beauty with their inferior travesties.

You would not allow such villainy to go unpunished.

You swore this vow as the skies brightened, the day’s dawn shapening into a beautiful morning proper…

-o00o-

It was a beautiful day in the village…and you are a horrible Joxter.

However within the village dwelt horrible people who would desecrate nature with such gall, so it was only right their day be ruined for their sins.

There would be no mercy.

They already made it clear that peace was never an option…

…and who were you to refuse your calling as a righteous harbinger of chaos when it beckoned you so?


	2. Area 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1/19/20 - Alrighty, full chapter finally here!
> 
> Thank you to all my discord buddies for all your help and assistance, shout outs to Lee, Wonder, Lance, and Max

The first thing you needed to do was to infiltrate the villain’s verdure prison.

Upon closer inspection, you see that a sizable garden bounty is additionally among the captive plantlife within the confinement. The cruel warden continued cleaving away at an innocent birch (conducting the tree’s torture before the helpless eyes of their brethren and _still_ droning out that grating tone-deaf mockery of a tune, the _monster_ ) atop a stepladder, and every which way all over the enclosure were signs mercilessly _stabbed_ into the ground.

Oh yes.

You were to truly show no mercy to this cad.

The first of your carnage began with two sacks of topsoil. Your claws tore them open effortlessly, spilling the fresh soil out like the guts of cleaned fish. You also kicked the sacks over to further scattered their contents about, creating a nice little mismash next to the front gate.

The _locked_ front gate.

Well, this dumb bloke is just _asking_ for it at this point from you.

You give your claws a little wiggle and began shimmying the gate handle, only…there was no keyhole. You give it another once over, but still turn up the same results. Nothing to access the lock.

…Ah.

So it was the locked front gate _from the inside._

No means to lockpick or lock-break on your side of the gate door.

You exhale huffily at this irksome complication in your scheme, but you are left little choice but to find an alternative way around.

It wasn’t as though you were _incapable_ of simply climbing over the fence, but you refused to stoop to such mundane tactics for this endeavor.

Masterstroke mayhem-making such as this was to be was to _only_ be carried out with proper roguish _pizazz_!

Or something along those lines, you think.

Flowery speech was more the forte of a certain over dramatic friend of yours, but that sounded close enough to something you think he’d say to describe what you were doing in this situation.

Back to the present, you flash your bright cerulean blues and give your surroundings another looksie. Regrettably, there isn’t much to work with. You saw no use for the bland stubby monument beside the bridge, and the dormant lawn mower wasn’t what you were looking for. You would keep it in mind to use later, though.

Your luck turns around after you decide to scope out more of the park’s perimeter. Off on the left side, you find another locked gate door.

One with much smaller dimensions and also _did_ have a visible and accessible padlock to prise open.

You break it with your usual ease courtesy of bashing it with a rock.

However, this lesser gate does not provide access to the nature cage, but to another pathway altogether.

You don’t pursue this new path, and instead bash the mini gate door more until it comes off its hinges. Then after reducing it to flinders, you proceed with you next course of action.

It was now time to get your adversary’s attention.

Using your newly acquired projectile, you take aim and pitch the broken lock at the park keeper.

It sails gloriously over the fence and hits the fiend square in the face, as well as knocking him off his stepladder.

You watch his delightful fall then duck to the ground behind the cover of the hedges flush against the left side fence. It’s hard to stifle your laughter as you overhear the discombobulated yawping of the surprised villain.

You give a silent cheer hearing the front gate unlock, but keep up your guard as you track your enemy’s approaching footsteps. No doubt searching for the culprit who struck him.

You edge yourself towards the side pathway, keeping pressed against the hedges, when your paw slips into a surprise hollow in the quickset.

…oh, happy day.

What joyous luck!

You find a serendipitous Joxter-sized hole in the hedge. You crawl right on through it to discover a sneaky alternate entrance for you to easily get in and out of the park.

~~_Get into the park_~~

You crawl through the gap (taking not inconsiderable delight in widening the hole and leaving the branches in disarray) and emerge victorious on the other side of the hedgerow, where you look around and–

Oh. Oh _no_.

It was even worse than you’d thought now that you were up close. 

You’ve never seen nature look so… _unnatural_ before. There wasn’t a single plant in this entire place that hasn’t had near all of its dignity stripped of it by that meddlesome park keeper. Not even the very earth below his feet been spared, the whole lot of it subjugated, sown and mowed with a vengeance into endless neat stripes save for the perfectly symmetrical patches of soil where crops were reluctantly permitted to grow. Up beyond the vegetable beds was a shed with the door open, displaying row upon row of wickedly gleaming gardening tools. Even the sight of them makes your fur bristle– nasty sharp nature torture devices that would chop up the entire world if it didn’t suit their narrow view of what was pleasant to look at. 

You’re about to set off towards them and gather up as many as you can to go to town on the gate with when the park keeper makes his appearance, rubbing at his head and muttering angrily to himself. It’s too late to take cover anywhere (and frankly, you’ve no intention of hiding from a fight if this idiot’s looking to start one with you head on), but he doesn’t seem to see you anyway.

At least not until he stumbles over the top of you.

This isn’t the first time this has happened: you get cold pretty easily, and sometimes (like last night) you get so absorbed in your wandering that you don’t get home before the sun rises, so you tend to pack on the layers so you won’t catch a chill during the night. Not that you take that sort of thing at all seriously, of course, but recent events have eventuated that have made you far more aware of how cruel the weather can be.

Anyway, given the fact that said later are oft none too well kempt thanks to your carefree ways, people have often mistaken you for a pile of dirty rags, and it appears this fellow has followed in their footsteps. 

Quite literally, in fact.

Something you wish would cease being a habit of theirs.

Your yowling at receiving a steel-capped boot to the stomach is muffled by the park keeper’s own pained wails, loud and shrill despite the fact that he’s lying face down in a bed of cauliflowers. He gets up, almost filthier than you are, and squints down at you. You stonily meet his gaze in challenge, only to realize that the desired dramatic effect is somewhat lost as a result of your hat being askew and obscuring all but one of your eyes from the hole you were currently staring through.

You reach up and adjust it, grimacing as the movement reawakens the sting in your stomach from its less than friendly meeting with the villain’s boot. Waiting for the pain to finish subsiding and _refusing_ to be caught dead or alive showing weakness before your nemesis, you decide to stay put for the moment.

But despite your blasé posture, your appearance provokes a disapproving huff from the park keeper. 

Real rich, coming from him, given that he’s now wearing most of the contents of one of his vegetable patches. He wrinkles his snout, then marches off towards the shed. You watch in interest; is he going to try and push you out of his nature cage with a broom or something, perhaps? That sort of thing was always fun: 

Nothing like a wrestling match over a cleaning implement to really get the blood flowing in the morning. 

However, when the park keeper reemerges, he’s not carrying a broom (though you do see him prop a rake by the open door, which you plan to dispose of at the first opportunity). Instead, the thing he’s grasping in his paws is–

_How dare he._

Clutched against the park keeper’s chest was another sign, emblazoned with large black letters:

“ **PRIVATE PROPERTY. TRESPASSERS UNWELCOME** ”

As you watch stewing in your disgust, he props it alongside the rake and picks up a pot of paint to add to the lettering:

“ **THEIR RUBBISH ALSO UNWELCOME** ”

…Wait a minute.

Did…Did he really?

He didn’t notice your presence yet!

Not in the sense that there’s another person in the park with him: he still thinks you’re just a pile of rubbish that needs to be cleaned up left by someone who ditched it in the area. 

Sensing that there’s some fun to be had from this little misunderstanding, you grin and shuffle closer.

You wait, watching his expression intently, until he’s in the middle of a letter to give a piercing yowl. 

The results are the stuff dreams are made of: the park keeper obliterates his carefully-written message with a misplaced brushstroke, stumbles backwards into a nearby container of pansies and upsets it all over the floor of his shed, and, still flailing, manages to sink his foot into the abandoned pot of paint, which of course sends him toppling to the ground. 

From his sprawl on the grass, covered in soil and stains, he finally meets your eyes. You give him a wide smile, which he responded to with the sort of look one usually gives a person who has thoroughly humiliated them. He clambers to his feet, brushing stray fragments of dirt and grass from his person, and stomps over to pick up his sign. You watch with slowly dawning horror. 

_Surely_ he wasn’t.

You were right here, he _wouldn’t_ –

He picks up a hammer and pounds the sign into the poor defenceless earth.

_He did!_

The bastard actually _did!!_

You catch yourself before he sees the way your mouth parted from witnessing his act of brutality, but make sure he _does_ see you glare your daggers his way from under the broad brim of your hat.

This meant _war_.

You briefly eye the nearest signpost. You reach your arm towards it, paw hovering slightly and poised to strike.

He stares at you; you stare back. He barks at you not to do it. _Orders_ you not to _dare TRY_.

You swat it over with aggressive spite.

Mumrikar _do not_ take orders.

And you are not just any mere mumrik.

You are a Joxter.

And Joxters not only _defy_ orders, but go out of their way to then do the opposite out of principle.

The way he gapes at your audacity is unequalled. You take advantage of his wool-gathering to go about doing the same to the rest. You get through a baker’s dozen before the enemy regains his bearings to come after you.

Of course, all this accomplishes is you upheaving the picket stakes faster.

It pleased you immensely how well it worked out in your favor to finish knocking over the signs in the park when you were chased directly into them. You can’t remember the exact number, but it felt like forty at least, you think with disgust.

One sign was offensive enough, but _this_ villain! Even for a park keeper, this was crossing the line too far!

This wasn’t just a nature prison: it was a demented _shrine_ to the defilement of Mother Earth Herself!

So as you ran laps around the park, toppling the signs with the cultist lout wheezing at your heels, you do your due diligence to make a mess of everything you pass.

Every pot broken to bits, every sack of whatever contents slashed open and spilt in an untidy heap, and every nature torture tool (for the time being, just the ones you could pick up and chuck at your target whilst in a sprint) turned against the torturer. 

There was a point when the park keeper managed to step on the gardening hoe and was struck by the implement’s mutiny of its own volition. You couldn’t take credit for that one, but by Tove was it _magnificent_.

All your enemy could do was watch as his perfect neat little world fell apart around him. Since he was no match for your speed, he could only resort to alternating between pleading and raging (both to absolutely no effect) at you to desist.

It didn’t take long before the uncanny prim and proper park was reduced to undignified shambles. Although you did take care to avoid inflicting harm on the hostage plantlife. Unlike the park keeper oik, you weren’t an irredeemable monster.

You creamed him particularly harshly with a stray stone when the villain, in all his carelessness, nearly trampled the single flower growing in the captivity he was boasting to “care for”. The delicate little tulip – a bonny fair variegated pink one, you might add – required the most vigilance on your part to ensure no harm befell it during your fun.

Unlike the tree hostages, it lacked the hardiness to inflict more harm back if the park keeper ran into it.

You then see a very ornate sign near the entrance to the park, the only one you haven’t pulled up and broken. 

However, the park keeper suddenly finds a burst of speed to catch up to you and jumps in your way to head you off in front of the sign. 

You attempt to dodge around him to grab it, but you’re taken by surprise when you find yourself picked up!

By your _scruff!_

An act that was only appropriate amongst other mumrikar to do, and even then was strictly only for carrying kits!

Would the insults never cease?!

With enough fuss, you do get him to unhand you but you’re only dropped when there’s a couple meters created between you and your target. However, for once, your fury finds an equal in the park keeper’s stubbornness. Each time you attempt to rush for the sign again, you’re met with the same result and further embarrassment. There is some reprieve in getting to inflict more wounds upon your adversary in retaliation to get him to release you, but any approach made towards the sign is impeded.

You’d have to try a different tactic if you want to get rid of the final sign.

You start looking around for something you can distract the park keeper with, something that will hold his attention for a while. 

The vegetable patches are no good. The park keeper wouldn’t take kindly to his immaculate rows being dismantled, but it’s clear that he’s made guarding the sign his top priority. Even if he uprooted some of the plants and carried them over to show him (which you’re very reluctant to do – they may be disgustingly tidy, but that’s not the plants’ fault), once they’d been dug out of the earth there wouldn’t be enough urgency for the park keeper to need to rush over to replant them immediately rather than wait out for you to leave first before fixing your mess. 

No, you needed something else. Something portable, something that would still retain higher value in the park keeper’s eyes once you’d taken it, and something that could suffer consequential damage that could only be avoided if immediate action was taken.

Something like– _the gardening tools_. 

Now, of course, you know very little about gardening, so you aren’t sure what’s going to be the most alarming thing to see in the possession of a no-good Joxter, which throws something of a spanner into the works. In the end, you just go for the biggest implement, because though you try to stay as far away from the types who buy and sell as much as possible, you’ve nevertheless picked up on the fact that bigger things usually cost more. 

You drag the rake over to where the park keeper is standing at the sign by your fangs (gnawing into the wood hard enough to leave marks), giving him a wicked grin before making a break for the lake. 

The park keeper, horrified, rushes towards you, but doesn’t get there before you reach the little bridge and heave the thing towards the water below. The park keeper rushes to the bridge and leans far over the banister, surprised when he fails to spot the rake floating in the water…although not half as surprised as he is when you give him a mighty shove and he ends up in the lake himself. 

~~_Get the park keeper to take a plunge_ ~~

The park keeper surfaces ungainly, spitting out water scum and trying unsuccessfully to unentangle himself from the duckweed that’s wrapped itself around his limbs. When he meets your gaze again, you produce the rake from behind your back to reveal your feint.

Your smile only broadens as you watch how he reacts to you tossing it far off into the water opposite of his direction.

~~_Rake in the lake_ ~~

And what a show it is! 

The park keeper’s complexion pales a few shades lighter, and his paws go to hold his head in horror. His eyes are now as wide as dinner plates, and his mouth flaps open and close without uttering a single sound as he watched the rake sail off and land with a distant splash. The sight of it all reminds you of a floundering fish. And quite like a floundering fish, the park keeper dives forward, splashing and kicking up water as he struggles to reach and retrieve the rake.

You wait for one moment, then two, and then three– just long enough for the park keeper to get within an arm’s reach the rake, before you give a small whistle. Upon seeing the park keeper whirl around, you let the corners of your lips curl up into another smug grin as you hold up your second prize for him to see.

The park keeper squinted to get a better look at what you have, before going still. His paw immediately goes to his belt, where a ring of keys would’ve been had you not snatched them in your act of pushing him into the water. 

Twirling the key ring around your finger, you practically prance off the bridge and make your way back towards the park. You find yourself humming a jolly little tune, that is then accompanied by the distant shouting and splashing of the park keeper as he struggles to make his way back to you– the rake all but forgotten.

For all his best efforts, he does not catch up in time before you close the front gate behind you.

To your great delight, you discover it locks on its own when its shut even _without_ the use of the keys.

_~~Lock the park keeper out of the park~~_

So what to do now?

It’s a difficult decision: now that there’s no longer a fuming park keeper following you around, a lot of the urgency has been removed from the situation, and you’re free to deliberate on how best to dismantle this horticultural torture chamber at your leisure.

You decide to start with raking up the tidy lawns, baring more of the soil with every swipe of your paws, giving the vegetables and shrubbery so recently confined to tiny tidy rectangles space to spread and thrive. With that out of the way, you turn your attention to those rows of gleaming metal in the shed, picking them up by the armful and flinging them over the hedge into the lake. 

The park keeper, by this point, has managed to pull himself up onto land, and the string of obscenities he lets out when he sees his gardening tools soaring over his beloved topiary into the muddy depths is quite something. Honestly, you don’t see how anyone could let this fellow be in charge of a patch of nature– plants are careful listeners, and such language at all hours of the day would surely make them very ill. As you head back over to the shed, you see him inspecting the hedge for any gaps, and quicken your pace. 

You fling the last of the tools into the drink, and turn back to check up on the park keeper; and not a moment too soon, as he’s found your secret entrance and is busy trying to fit through it. It’s not a pretty sight. The hole is clearly too small for his frame, but he’s trying to overcome that fact through sheer willpower alone. You wince as he shoves at the branches: this hedge may be a poor stunted little thing, clipped to within an inch of its life, but it doesn’t deserve this kind of treatment. As you continue to watch, he manages to tear off a huge chunk of greenery, chucking it behind him without even a backwards glance as he continues to try and force himself through. 

It’s the nonchalance that does it– it’s clear that this villain will destroy all the plants in this park if it means putting an end to your meddling, and while he may be fine with that, you shudder with horror at the very thought of all that beauty being so thoughtlessly ruined. Your mind made up, you fish the keys out of your coat pocket and jingle them loudly, distracting the park keeper from his rampage. 

Once you’re sure you’ve got his attention (you can tell by the barrage of insults he hurls your way), you fling the keys over the hedge, as far away from the two of you as you can. With a cry of fury, the park keeper chases after them, leaving you free to slip through the hole and hide yourself near the gate. 

The cad makes his way up the path, muttering curses and trying to remove fragments of hedge from his person. _Serves him right for tearing them off in the first place,_ you think savagely.

Undetected, you steal along after him, your eyes trained on the keys clutched in his paw. You lurk behind him as he unlocks the gate– then you rush forward, snatching the keys off him and pushing him into his little nature cage in one swift motion. As he bellows indignantly, you lock the gate again, slipping the keys into your coat pocket. 

He turns to give you a pouty huff, but doesn’t mind you any further, more preoccupied with trying to clean up the big mess you left him.

You grinned impishly to yourself as you eye his turned back, paying you no mind as you shut the gate behind you and completely oblivious to what you have just done.

 _How long will it take for him to realize,_ you wonder. 

And more importantly, what else could you do to make his figuring it out more entertaining?

As you wander around again, you notice something you missed from your initial perusal.

A red, plaid-patterned picnic blanket by the lower shoreside of the lake.

A _comfy,_ red plaid-patterned picnic blanket you discover after you roll over and around on it a good bit when you give it a closer inspection. The weave’s texture against your back makes you purr, and so does the thought of enjoying a picnic on its soft fabric.

It suddenly occurs to you that you hadn’t eaten breakfast yet today, and your stomach then gave a vocal protest as if on cue. This is promptly followed by a sharp cramp in your abdomen as if to ensure you got the message you needed to ameliorate it this instant.

Fortunately, you don’t have to look far to find and obtain sustenance. In fact, the park keeper has so readily provided a generously sized selection for you to choose from.

You weren’t especially ravenous by any means, but there was no harm in a little indulgence once in a while. Why not make this meal a true picnic feast?

The opportunity to piss off the park keeper even more was all the reasoning you needed to make your decision and begin preparations.

For whatever reason, some fool abandoned a perfectly good apple, sandwich, and picnic basket on a bench not three steps away from the blanket. Not that you cared very much, as their loss was your gain here. You carry all three to the blanket.

There wasn’t anything else inside the basket sadly, but having a picnic without the basket just doesn’t have the same appeal.

Now for the fun parts.

You’re lucky that there’s such a range of produce growing in this park. If your dear park keeper friend had limited himself to ferns or just one or two fruit trees, your repast would have been in a sorry state indeed. As it is, you have a plethora of choices before you. 

One by one, you made your rounds in and out of the park, acquiring a lush oversized melon, a bright orange pumpkin, and of course only the finest cabbage for your ideal picnic. All carefully smuggled out through the hedge hole.

As you trot back and forth to the blanket, you can hear the sublime reprise of angry swearing and rattling metal from the park gates– it’s all the foolish park keeper can do as he finally figures out your sneaky trick and that he’s now a prisoner in the very prison of his own creation.

Not only is it poetic irony at its finest, there's nothing he can do to stop you from having this picnic.

Just for laughs, you uprooted all the carrots in the patch. You had already decided you only wanted to take one to have at your picnic, but it was funny making another mess to make the park keeper scream over.

He couldn’t move for a full two minutes he was so torn between cleaning the carrot patch and chasing you when you stole his thermos and jam. By the time he made a decision, you had already escaped with them out of the park.

It was especially fun whenever the park keeper tried chasing you during your rounds. He was no match for your superior speed, and never failed to get a laugh whenever he tripped over his own feet in his pursuit.

Especially the multiple times he fell face-first in the fertilizer mess you made earlier or after getting smacked in the face from stepping on his own rake.

Plus, since the front gate door locked itself after you closed it again and you swiped his keys, he was trapped inside the prison of his own making without any means to follow you after you escaped with each item outside the fence. Someone with his middle couldn’t fit through your hidden hedge hole even if he did find it out, after all.

Nicking the radio was an excellent final addition to top it off.

There was just something very satisfying about making your clean getaway from a bamboozled nemesis and completing your picnic cornucopia from the rest of the cad’s undeserved viands you pilfered off him…all while backed with the triumphant musical accompaniment of bagpipes.

~~_Have a picnic_ ~~

_(bring to blanket:_ ~~_basket_~~ _,_ ~~_sandwich_~~ _,_ ~~_ja_~~ _,_ ~~_thermos_~~ _,_ ~~_apple_~~ _,_ ~~_carrot_~~ _,_ ~~_cabbage_~~ _,_ ~~_pumpkin_~~ _,_ ~~_melon_~~ _,_ ~~_radio_~~ _)_

The blackguard in question wasn’t quiet about what he thought about your clever feat. While you vaguely recall a good dozen very colorful words being thrown at you, the rest of his blatherings fell deaf on your ears.

You had no regard for such scoundrels as he, nor did you for whatever drivel he had to spout on about to even bother hearing. 

All the same, it made your feast taste all the sweeter.

The fiend was still going at it red-faced as you licked your digits clean. Although the worst scum of the world, you had to begrudgingly admire his impressive endurance to puff out hot air.

After finally picking out that one stubborn piece of apple peel that _really_ got stuck between your back molars, you lazily shift your eyes towards the villain. 

He seemed to be shouting even more intensely, but whatever it was, you weren’t listening. Your attention had gravitated back to something much more interesting: looking at the pile of leftover scraps from your hearty breakfast. 

It was a very ample pile of scraps.

Not a minute later, you grew bored of looking at them and got up to leave.

Your ears suddenly strained at the abrupt increased loudness from the incorrigible being. He was yelling louder and doing an odd dance of sorts, involving stabbing motions with his fingers in your direction and towards the ground.

Agog, you proffer a pointed finger of your own at yourself, then gesture back at the scraps in an attempt to mimic the park keeper’s strange display. Hopefully, it wasn’t a courting dance you just signified expressing interest in reciprocating.

Luckily for you, the fiend did not give any more obvious flirty or promiscuous advances in response, which most certainly dismissed that notion. 

What a relief that was, knowing both you and your stomach would be spared such a repulsive affair. The mere thought made you nauseous, and you would be most upset if the wonderful meal you just had would have had to go to waste.

He yelled at you more things you didn’t catch, so you still weren’t sure what he was trying to say.

It had something to do with the scraps, you knew that much.

He kept pointing at the scraps aggressively, so he must want something to do with them.

You tried not to think too deeply about what that might be as you lean down to pick one up to see what happens.

He nods at you bitterly and points at the scraps again, as well as does another strange motioning with his paws.

This awkward back and forth game of charades continues to where you’ve gathered up most of the scraps in your arms. You’ve managed to surmise that picking them up off the picnic blanket makes the park keeper stop pointing, but not stop making the other weird gestures, and that whenever you put the scraps down, he points at them angrily and makes the gestures while jumping around like a monkey.

He must be banned from this game at parties, because he’s absolutely terrible at it if this was any indication.

You wreck your mind trying to think what prim and proper only-keeper could possibly want with a bunch of messy scraps.

Compost for the plants, maybe?

It puzzles you to consider a park keeper capable of being so considerate, but you aren’t coming up with any other answers.

You experimentally toss one scrap over the fence, aiming for one of the fertilizer piles. It lands right where you wanted, and you toss over another. And another. And another. And another.

All of them landing in the fertilizer pile as intended.

As you lobbed over more, the park keeper started jumping around in the way of your throws. You didn’t mind the extra challenge, and it made you smile whenever it resulted in the scraps hitting him in the face or other.

He sure didn’t like that, but it was funny, so you kept doing it.

You were sad when you ran out of scraps to throw, but you made your last throws count. You laughed until it hurt when every one of the melon scrap throws landed perfectly, smarting him clean across the face.

As he’s still locked inside, all he can do is glare at you. Through your tears and wheezing, you see him huffily try to cleanly wipe off the melon juice and unlodge the one piece of melon shell that somehow managed to get wedged up one of his nostrils. He proceeds to throw another glorious tantrum that has you topple over from laughter, to which he shrieks indignantly before turning heel and stomping off.

It was hard to stand in your state, but your curiosity made it your obligation to follow.

You slip inside through the hedge hole from the side and trot on all fours in his direction, ducking into some brush a few paces away. You watch as he tramps over to the back gate in a huff. He goes to pick up–

The _nerve_ of this bastard!

How many blasted signs did he own?!

You narrowed your eyes and prepared to run at him and attack, but stopped yourself short. You see the park keeper brandish a hefty hammer and an even better idea presented itself.

So instead, you keep your eyes trained on him as he resumes with his profane ritual. He’s so deeply absorbed in his proceedings, he completely overlooks you quietly slinking closer his way on all fours.

You sit yourself a little ways behind him as the tool readies the hammer to nail the offending pike into the poor greensward.

It hovers once, then twice, then on the silent ‘three’, is raised up completely to come down to make the strike and–

“ **[Mjau](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=w7x_lWJNnNg)** ****,” you meowed.

As expected, the villain was greatly affrighted by your rumbling baritone miaow. His scared shitless jumping out of his skin was _majestic_ to behold.

~~_Get the park keeper to hammer his thumb_ ~~

The true crème de la crème of it all was how amidst his knee-jerked flailing, the park keeper bashed his thumb instead of his nature humiliation stake. Howling in pain, he instinctively grabbed his injured digit, only to drop the hammer on his foot which produced another rather emasculating cry from the fiend.

Now hopping around attempting to hold his now injured foot _and_ thumb in his free hand, the villain quickly lost his balance and toppled over in an undignified heap with a splendid crash! The second gate to the nature cage fared poorly against its warden’s weight.

The irony of it pleased you greatly.

Curiously, you noticed how still the chump was lying on the ground.

Was he dead?

Best walk on his face to be sure.

So you did.

The fiend flailed about, swearing loudly as he tossed you aside _very much_ still alive.

A shame.

He shoves you away, but wonderfully you land in the perfect spot to remove the vile bastardization of good wood and take off running again.

He screams after you in a more rabid fashion now as you dash for the shed. 

You jump up onto the ajar door as he makes a dive for you, skidding half inside it. He’s barely picked himself up onto his knees when you leap down and break the sign over the back of his head!

He flops over back down and doesn’t move to get up.

You walk on his face again to check if he’s dead.

You aren’t thrown aside this time, but you can just feel a small rise and fall in his chest as you walk over that part of him.

Just unconscious then.

A shame.

You shrug off the disappointment easily enough when you find a very durable padlock that fits perfectly through the latch on the shed’s door to click into place.

~~_Lock the park keeper in his tool shed_ ~~

At last, your enemy is incapacitated.

Now nothing stood in your way from– _oooh_! That’s pretty! What’s that?

You crouch low to get a better look at the fallen article. 

It was a very nice and pretty sunhat. What such a nice and pretty thing was doing in an awful place like this, you weren’t sure. Maybe it belonged to the park keeper’s wife, or maybe it was his. You weren’t one to judge fashion tastes, but you did pass judgment on the scum of the earth.

And neither nature destroyers nor their accomplices deserved to have nice things.

Therefore, you would be taking this, you decide as you store it under your own hat for safe keeping.

It deserved much better.

~~_Collect Sunhat_ ~~

In fact, you knew _exactly_ where to give such a fine sunhat a better home…

However, loathe as you are to do so, you mustn’t let your mind drift when your task is unfinished.

As you make your rounds uprooting all the picket and metal embedded collars still erected in the park, you snap those accursed pruners in two after you get some good use of them as a makeshift club to break the fences down faster. Including knocking down that gaudy thing over the entrance you couldn’t take down earlier.

You also pocket the small trowel you find by the carrot patch just for funsies. It’ll annoy the daylights out of the villain when he’s not able to find it later when he comes to.

Once all the offensive paraphernalia had been gathered in one place, you took out your lighter to commence with the final component for your liberation of the nature prison.

You burn them all with extreme prejudice.

~~_Steal/destroy all signs and fences in the area_ ~~

While your bonfire blazed on, you dusted your paws with accomplishment for a job well done.

Your work was done here, but this was only the beginning.

There was still the rest of the village to punish, after all.

Another idea sparks as you spot the lone tulip again on your way out.

Yet another little treasure unworthy to be in the paws of such filth. You would _not_ allow it to be reclaimed by the enemy.

Careful as you can, you pluck it from the bed and tuck it in the rope cord atop your hat.

~~_Collect Tulip_ ~~

You pause in your tracks feeling your ears flick, picking up the sound of wings flapping and trilling chirps from behind you. Turning around, you see a pheasant flitting about very close to your bonfire, still ablaze.

You aren’t sure why it was doing something so dangerous to itself, but you rush back over to shoo it away from going any closer to the flames.

Maybe you ought to put that out _before_ you leave.

The bird lands nearby, but at a much more respectable distance from the fire. It’s then you notice this is the same pheasant you chased in the forest from before.

The Pheasant looks out among the liberated land, and you notice with interest how it appears confused by the state of the place. It turns back to you as if to ask if what madness had happened here was your handiwork.

“Yeah yeah, I did this,” you admit. “I don’t like what park keepers do to nature, so I set it right. Only the bad things are burning in that fire, promise.”

The Pheasant blinks at you, staring awed if a bird could look such a way. It shifts its gaze about again, between you and looking around for something it can’t seem to find.

“He’s trapped in the shed over there, by the way. He won’t be making any more trouble anytime soon,” you add.

Your guess proves correct, as the bird visibly appears to calm after you said that.

The Pheasant then eyes a torn open sack of spilt seeds, carefully approaching towards it and flicking its gaze back at you as if asking if it can take it.

“Go on. It’s all yours, if you want it. I certainly won’t stop you,” you encourage.

The Pheasant wasted no time in eagerly pecking at the seeds. As you watched, yet another idea sprung to mind. “In fact…you wouldn’t happen to know any friends, do you? Or simply anyone who’d want to enjoy feasting upon the spoils here and reclaim the rest of this land that had been stolen by that park keeper. Would you happen to know anyone like that?”

The smirk you make is truly devilish when the Pheasant nods conspiratorially at you.

So it seems you aren’t alone with your grievance against the park keeper.

It didn’t take long after the Pheasant left for the forest to return with a small population of friends eager to take up on the offer. A good dozen of rodents alone happily helped themselves to the remaining vegetable harvest, while the Pheasant shared the seeds with what appeared to be its family and the rest of the birds of a feather who chose to partake.

Those that weren’t enjoying the bounty of food busied themselves making new homes in the area. From building nests and dreys in the branches to hollowing out burrows dens in the tree trunks and ground itself, all the little beasts got themselves settled in comfortably, which was nice to see. As was watching them do all sorts of other things to the land that would be a right nuisance to the park keeper if he saw.

After you put out the fire, a small bunch of deer beat you to the punch of grounding the charred remains into ashes.

You smile approvingly.

Satisfied, you saunter along the trail outside past where you tore down the back gate and make your way towards your next target…

-o00o-

It’s a beautiful day in the village…and you are a horrible Joxter.

However within the village dwelt horrible people who would desecrate nature with such gall, so it was only right their day be ruined for their sins.

The wretched park keeper had gotten his just deserts, but it was only the start. One was down, but many more awaited...

…and who were you to refuse your calling as a righteous harbinger of chaos when it beckoned you so?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pls comment

**Author's Note:**

> I honestly don’t understand how my brain and writing process work.
> 
> Don’t forget to comment if you liked it and want to see more :D


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